The model going aboard the ISS, referred to as V-III, will be brought by a crew member to the Cupola—the same room where Chris Hadfield filmed his music videos—so it can be tested with the picturesque Earth as its backdrop. Once the testing is complete, Whitehead says, the final version of the sculpture will be ready to go to the moon by year’s end. Whether it will get a ride there at that time is still up in the air. The Vitae creators have their hopes set on the Google Lunar XPrize, a competition challenging teams of space engineers to land and operate robotic spacecraft on the moon’s surface by the end of 2017. The first group to do so wins a $20 million prize, and could potentially be a route to the moon for Vitae. Whitehead says he has developed strong links with Astrobotic, a team that once appeared to be leading in the competition but has since dropped out. “If we’d gone with them we’d just be a payload, so all we needed to do legally was to satisfy them that we were suitable for their mission,” Whitehead says.

Florida-based Moon Express now appears to be in the lead for the XPrize, having become the first private company to receive permission to land on the moon last summer. Moon Express plans to make its trip by the end of 2017 flying aboard the Rocket Lab Electron rocket, and could very well bring Vitae along for the ride. “As soon as the Electron looks as though it’s going to fly, we would go back to Moon Express,” he says. “We’ve got fairly strong ties to almost anybody who might be going to the moon.” Even so, there’s no guarantee Banon’s work will end up joining Warhol’s and Van Hoeydonck’s on the moon. Astrobotic has pushed back its moon mission to 2019. The Electron rocket carrying Moon Express has yet to be tested. The time, money and regulations required for the Vitae team to buy their own rocket launch could put them well beyond the 2017 mission they desire.

As the Vitae team awaits the hoped-for final leg of the journey, Banon will continue to exhibit her work and collect handprints for the sculpture. The dish at the bottom will have digitally reduced handprints printed on it as a symbol of humanity. The artist aims to collect one million handprints of people from all six continents, collecting the prints during exhibits and through online submissions. While there are many technical obstacles to putting artwork on the moon, Banon and Whitehead say they have yet to face any ethical concerns. “I think it could help a lot of people fight the weight of the fear on Earth at the moment,” she says. “When I put Les Braves on the shore of Omaha Beach, there were people that said, ‘Why don’t you just leave the sand the way it is?’ But then the veterans that fought there told me, ‘Please do it, because we have nothing that could remind us of our life there.’ ”